Bp 563
563 Bamako
Mali

http://www.festival-au-desert.org

Created in Jannuary 2001, the "festival au désert" is held every year in Essakane, two hours from Timbouctou in Mali. This Festival seeks its origin

public contact

• email: ahaliss@yahoo.fr

business contact

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activities

• Artist
  • Manager
• Promoter
  • Festival

visited events

• WOMEX 2007
• WOMEX 2008

stand number WOMEX 2008: 1-H.14, I.14, H.15, I.15

company description

The Festival in the Desert, which is organised by the Touareg associations EFES and AITMA, is one of the finest showcases of the diversity of global music and culture, with particular emphasis on the Sahara.

It began back in 2001 as an itinerant event and was launched with the help of the French group Lo'Jo and the Festival of Chalon dans la Rue. Since 2003, however, The Festival In The Desert has settled in Essakane, which is situated about sixty kilometres north west of Timbuktu in Northern Mali. A stone archway deep in the middle of the southern Sahara carries the emblem of the Festival: the key to the desert. The Festival is likewise the key to the music and culture of the desert.

The natural beauty of the site at Essakane is legendary but it is also an ideal place for the different Touareg, or Tamashek, communities of Mali, Mauretania, Niger and Algeria, to meet. At the end of the 1990s, in the wake of the rebellion, the Touaregs revived the ancestral tradition of the great annual gatherings of desert people. After the season of nomadism, the various disparate clans would get together to debate the great questions of the moment, resolve conflicts between groups or individuals and have fun.

The Festival's hosts are the nomads of the region. They mix with festivalgoers who have travelled from the four corners of the globe to take part in this extraordinary event. The accomodation takes the form of a nomad camp. Tents are placed around the festival site. Guests, audiences, artists, technicians and organisers are all accomodated 'Touareg style'. All around them, various Touareg clans and their camel-riders set up camp with their herds.

The Festival has taken place every January, over three days and nights, for the past seven years. The daylight hours are filled with low-key traditional performances, camel parades and races, the tindé (traditional woman's singing and drumming), crafts shows, workshops and discussion forums aimed at the nomads themselves. After nightfall, on a stage erected in the dunes under the full moon, music take pride of place, with concerts dedicated primarily to desert music, but also to music from all over the world.

The Festival has welcomed the following artists in previous editions: (from Mali…) Ali Farka Touré, Oumou Sangare, Amadou & Mariam with Manu Chao, Tinariwen, Tartit, Habib Koïté, Toumani Diabaté, Bassekou Kouyaté, Baba Salah…………………… (from Niger…) Mamar Kassey, Abdallah Takrist, Tarbiat, Finatawa, Tidawt, (from Mauretania…) Dimi Mint Abba, Yacine Ahl Nanna, Aïcha Mint Chingualy, Seddoum, Noura Mint Seymali; ( From Guinea…) Sekouba Bambino (from France…) Lo'Jo, Kwal, (from the UK…) Damon Albarn, Justin Adams, Robert Plant, (from the USA…) Blackfire, Markus James, Roswell Bud, Leni Stern (from Italy…) Ludovico Einaudi, and many many others from Morroco, Canada, Spain, Holland, Ireland, India, Sweden, Israël….